The Dart: Lover of N.C. lighthouses transformed Burke field

The Dart: People and places off the beaten path

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

MORGANTON -- The crashing waves and sandy beaches of the N.C. coast are hours away from the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but that didn't stop Millard Duckworth from building seven miniature lighthouses in rural Burke County.

Sure, a small creek tumbles past the cylinder-shaped structures that jut 12 feet or more into the sky, but no ship or wayward fisherman runs the risk of getting lost on its waters.
Duckworth built the towers -- replicas of seven of the state's lighthouses lining the N.C. coast for one reason.

"He just liked lighthouses," said his cousin, J.B. Duckworth, who was recruited to help build and paint the structures. "He'd say, `Why go all the way to the coast if you can just come to Burke County?' "

Millard Duckworth, 74, died in March, but the staggered row of lighthouses still sit where The Dart landed Monday -- in a wooded field near a stream, fallen tepee and two-story treehouse off Dentons Chapel Road in Burke County.

Built to look like smaller versions of the actual lighthouses, Duckworth's structures are also staggered throughout the field in rough approximation to their locations on the coast.

The Currituck Beach lighthouse, a brick tower with two yellow windows on its face, is closest to Virginia and is the most northern structure in Duckworth's display.

The six others -- lighthouses from Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, Ocracoke, Cape Lookout, Bald Head Island and Oak Island -- zig-zag across the thick, long grass in the same order they dot the coast.

Duckworth's fascination with the beacons began when he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, seeing lighthouses as he traveled across the county and other parts of the world, said Tony Duckworth, his first cousin, once removed.

"He was a lighthouse man," he said.

In the years after his retirement from Great Lakes Carbon Corp., Millard Duckworth and his wife, Nancy, spent time at the coast, admiring the towering beacons, his cousin said.

He brought family members trinkets from trips, including a decorative license plate with all seven lighthouses -- for J.B. Duckworth to attach to the front of his pickup truck -- and a magazine with shots of each structure.

But the gifts weren't just souvenirs from the beach, J.B. Duckworth said. They were guides.
"He just came up with this idea to build these lighthouses," Duckworth said. "Every time he'd go, he came back with a different picture. " `I want this, and I want this,' he'd say."

Millard Duckworth recruited his cousin and a longtime friend, Bill Crawley, to help find the giant steel tubes that they later cut into two and sank into deep beds of cement, J.B. Duckworth said.
It took nearly a year, he said, to secure the giant posts, polish the metal and paint them to match seven of the state's lighthouses.

"We had to sandpaper those jokers so they were as clean as they could be before we could paint `em," he said. "It was a lot of fun, but it was a lot of aggravation, too."

Not long before Duckworth died, his wife took him on a road trip along the coastline to make sure the lighthouses he had built on his family's property matched the real thing.

"He wanted them just exactly like the pictures," J.B. Duckworth said. "And he wanted to see each one again to make sure they were just right."

Duckworth didn't make any changes to the structures when he returned, his cousin said, but the park became a sanctuary where Duckworth played cards with friends, sat in a treehouse he built above the lighthouses and swung from a rope into the nearby steam.

Duckworth died a few months after his last trip to the coast, his cousin said, but his wife made sure he'd be able to take his lighthouses with him.

Marking his grave in the cemetery at Hopewell Baptist Church -- just a few miles from the lighthouse park -- a shiny, black headstone stands out among the gray marble markers.

Etched on it are a rolling stream, a treehouse, and of course, seven lighthouses -- exactly as they look at the beach.

The point of The Dart
The idea behind The Dart is simple: We're looking for the kind of news the media don't usually report. We throw a dart at a map of one of the counties in the Catawba Valley, and we'll write about what's happening at that spot. We hope this feature will bring out stories that too often are ignored and will help you meet some of your neighbors in the region.


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